Mainly Norfolk: English
Folk and Other Good Music

King Henry

Steeleye Span recorded this grisly ballad in 1972 for their first album
of their long-time line-up,
Below the Salt.
The sleeve notes commented cryptically:

The shrill cry of an owl echoed to a woodland hut telling
“The Daughter of King Under-Waves”
of the approaching knight. She moved her misshapen form
(cursed on her by a wicked step-mother) through the doorway.
At every step the ground was shaken, at every turn there blew a storm,
the very sky darkened as she passed. But would tonight be the knight.

Former Steeleye Span member Martin Carthy sang
King Henry on his 1974 album
Sweet Wivelsfield;
this was reissued on
The Carthy Chronicles.
Carthy sang it live in a John Peel BBC Radio session recorded
on 22 May 1972 and broadcast on 30 May; this performance
was included as bonus track on the 2005 CD reissue of his album
Shearwater.

Martin Carthy commented in the first album's sleeve notes:

King Henry
is a heavily anglicised
Scottish way of telling the Beauty and the Beast story, the only difference
being that the sexes are reversed. It is a song that I very much wanted
to do for a very long time and tried several tunes, none of which seemed
to work satisfactorily The American tune
Bonaparte's Retreat
seemed in the end to carry the song best so with respectful nods towards Mike
Seeger, Doc Watson and many others, I swiped it.

Beauty and the Beast reversed, this ballad originated in the Gawain strand
of the Arthurian legend. The King Henry in the ballad probable never existed,
since the point of the tale is that chivalry has its own rewards.

The phrase “skin and bone” from this song may have supplied the
title for Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick's 1992 CD
Skin and Bone.

Emily Portman of The Furrow Collective sang King Henry
on their 2014 album
At Our Next Meeting.
She commented in their sleeve notes:

A tale of bewitchment and metamorphosis with a moral to men that appearances
can be deceptive and they shall reap great rewards if they give women what they
want! I came across King Henry in Bronson's
The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads
and, feeling like the first person to unearth such a gem in hundreds of years,
I set about collating my own text, adapting the melody from Mrs Brown of
Aberdeenshire. I later discovered everyone had a go at King Henry
in the '70s, but if we were put off because folk songs had been sung before,
they would still be lying in dusty archives.

This video shows The Furrow Collective at The Glad Cafe in Glasgow on
February 22, 2014:

Lyrics

Martin Carthy sings King Henry

Steeleye Span sing King Henry

Let never the man a-wooing ride
E'er forget things three
A routh of gold, a heart of love
Full of charity

Let never a man a-wooing wend
That lacketh things three
A store of gold, an open heart
and full of charity;

For it happened to King Henry
As a-hunting he did ride
Ta'en his hawk his good greyhound
Running loud down by his side

And this was seen of King Henry
Though he lay quite alone,
For he's taken him to a haunted hall
Seven miles from the town.

He's chased the roe deer him before
He's chased the buck all down to his den
And the fattest deer in all the flock
Young King Henry he has slain

He's chased the deer now him before
And the doe down by the den
Till the fattest buck in all the flock
King Henry he has slain.

King Henry he ate of the venison
The dogs ate of the blood
They lay down they fell asleep
Asleep as they were dead

His huntsman followed him to the hall
To make them burly cheer,
When loud the wind was heard to sound
And an earthquake rocked the floor.

It fell about the midnight hour
The hour when all men lay asleep
Such chill winds blew around the house
The very trees they did weep

And darkness covered all the hall
Where they sat at their meat.
The grey dogs, yowling, left their food
And crept to Henry's feet.

Great shakings shook the house about
Shakings split the door
The foulest woman that e'er there was
Came a-stamping on the floor

And louder howled the rising wind
And burst the fastened door,
And in there came a grisly ghost
Stamping on the floor.

Her head hit the roof of the hunting lodge
Her waist her waist you could hardly span
If a fouler woman lived
She was not known to God or man

Her head hit the roof-tree of the house,
Her middle you could not span,
Each frightened huntsman fled the hall
And left the king alone,

Her teeth were like the tether stakes,
Her nose like club or mell,
And nothing less she seemed to be
Than a fiend that comes from hell.